Comparison Essay: Ftm & Night Essay, Research Paper

Compare and Contrast Essay

Night and Farewell to Manzanar

The book Farewell to Manzanar is a book about Japanese concentration camps in the US. The book tells the story of one girl and her family in a place called Manzanar and the conditions they had to fight through. The family goes through changes and fight throughout them together as a team. The book Night is a book about the Jewish people taken from their homes and thrown into a death camp. The one the author mostly talks about is the death camp in Aushwits because that is where the story resides. This compelling book tells the story of a young man growing up in a world of his own filled with hatred and death. When Elie and his family get to the camp his family members are all killed right away except his father. This book gives great detail and foresight into the life of a normal day at Aushwits.

Jeanne Whatuski, author of Farewell to Manzanar and Elie Weisel author of Night told the stories of their lives in the horrible camps. As the two books progress on, the stories unfold and we start to see the real people behind the stories. The families are showing throughout the books how they can pull together in tough times. Though the families are eventually torn apart and some members of the families die because of the conditions at the camp they are stationed at.

One night another person in Elie’s block heard Elie cry out, “Night is falling, other prisoners continued pouring in from every block, I able suddenly to conquer time and space and submit all to everyone else.”. The block mate that hears Elie say this, feels that Elie has great compassion and is very willing toward others. The conditions at Aushwits are shown greatly by the last statement that Elie gave because it is showing how he is willing to give because the Nazi’s aren’t willing to give. He sits and wonders why he has been put here in this hell on earth. His question isn’t ever answered.

The days progress on, one day at a time and Jeanne feels fine. Her rations are not great but plentiful enough to keeps up with day to day chores and activities. Manzanar is like a city in so many ways, a great way to show this is that everyone has their own house, families are kept together, and there are police type figures. They aren’t drug around by a bell. The Japanese get to free lance the camp until dark, then all residence of Manzanar must turn into their blocks and go to sleep until sun rise.

Family life in Farewell to Manzanar is much closer because they are forced to be. In Manzanar one block was assigned to one family. As opposed to Night a family is scattered all over they camp and categorized according to strength, skill and smartness, pulling the family apart. It is like the summer time here in Chichester, friends are all together until school starts and all the friends are split up but how smart they are. Also all students are like Jewish people in camps with a lot less severe consequences, but we are all drug around by a bell schedule. It just makes the brain think where did they come up with the way to run a school.

Jeanne has a much better life in Manzanar because their it isn’t like a school it is more like a home life with friends and neighbors with a little bit of guidelines. Jeanne doesn’t even know how easy she has it compared to Elie. Elie is starved, beaten and treated like a barnyard animal. He is treated like this because he was eventually going to die in this camp (or so the Nazis thought) so they thought why treat them good when they are gonna die soon anyway. Jeanne is treated with almost a dignity because she is planning on being released after the whole Pearl Harbor thing blows over.

Throughout the stories the authors repeatedly speak about their own remembrance of what happened in their own situations. The books were written because of a survivor from different situations that they felt happened because of a certain bias toward a certain race. Elie Weisel feels that all he has been put throughout was a spell of some kind that he is proud that he got over. Jeanne Whatuski was a survivor of the Manzanar camp she has a near normal life now and is grateful that she has her whole family to live her life with.

As the books come to an end it is now seen that the books are an important part of all history because it is a great book about the treatment and discrimination against a select race of people. This will never happen again because of the morals of the people and constitution. So what has been taken from these books is that the Weisel family and the Whatuski family are very alike in dignity and spirit.